


Interlude: Proposals

by Inisheer



Series: Broken Things Can Be Repaired [3]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, angst? fluff? who knows? not me, the author lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-12-03 12:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11532333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inisheer/pseuds/Inisheer
Summary: Maggie smiled. She kept smiling, even as she spoke, in a gentle tone for harsh words. Words like 'not yet' and 'not like this' and 'you haven’t thought this through, have you?'It wasn’t 'no' but Alex heard heartbreak anyway. She heard her own voice, too loud. ‘You said you wanted all those firsts with me.’





	Interlude: Proposals

**Author's Note:**

> Because canon is a moving target and Chyler had to spoil Maggie's likely answer… #busted. Here's the version I've had rolling around in my head for a couple of months.

It will always be something of a blur. She remembers it like this.

Maggie smiled. She kept smiling, even as she spoke, in a gentle tone for harsh words. Words like _not yet_ and _not like this_ and _you haven’t thought this through, have you?_

(Maggie’s big on thinking things through.)

It wasn’t _no_ but Alex heard heartbreak anyway. She heard her own voice, too loud. ‘You said you wanted all those firsts with me.’

‘I do, Alex.’ Maggie’s fingers were on her cheek. Alex didn’t lean in, but she didn’t pull away. She wasn’t sure she could move. ‘I do, and I want to _enjoy_ them, not rush right to the finish line.’

Alex gestured around the ruined DEO. ‘What if there isn’t time?’

‘There will be.’

Alex heard it as a platitude. A balm to a rejected child. Maggie was still smiling, without pity, and Alex forced herself to nod. When Maggie said, ‘I love you,’ she returned the words with a kiss. Alex knew Maggie loved her. She just didn’t want to marry her.

It would be a long time before she understood.

*

Kara came back half-broken, too exhausted for any yellow sun to heal, without the weight of her mother’s necklace around her throat. Her laugh was hollow when she learned what had been said on the balcony. She didn’t try to correct Maggie, as she had once before, though she might have if she’d had the will to do more than drag herself to work each day, each night.

Maggie was there, sometimes when Alex couldn’t be. It became clear after a while she loved Kara for Kara’s own sake: despite Supergirl, and despite herself. Once on a warm night, during the witching hour, after just the right amount of beer, she told Alex about her siblings. She’d be blackout drunk before she talked about her parents, but stories of her little brothers could be coaxed from her, under the right circumstances. Alex lay with her head in Maggie’s lap, stretched across the bare bed with the sheets shoved to the floor, listening in silence while Maggie’s fingers scritched through her hair. If she spoke, even to ask questions, the spell would break and the stories end.

The next day they argued about laundry.

*

They went to Pride. (That’s another story.)

*

‘I don’t think I get it,’ Alex said.

She was looking for a distraction. She’d lost a bet involving James and a set of barbells, so now she had to eat her toast spread with hazelnut butter. Maggie looked deliciously smug. And delicious. The same could not be said of the hazelnut butter.

‘What don’t you get?’

‘Do you have doubts about us?’

‘ _Alex_ ,’ said Maggie. ‘It’s eight in the morning. On a Saturday. And no, I don’t have any doubts about you.’

Alex took a bite of crust nearly free of butter. She made a face anyway. ‘Gross.’ After swallowing: ‘That’s not what I asked.’

Maggie shot her a guilty look.

‘Oh.’

Alex thought about a girl of fourteen, tossed to the street like so much trash by the people she’d thought would love her unconditionally. The cheat, the player, _I work alone, Danvers._ Alex knew what self-sabotage her girlfriend was capable of and she knew, nonetheless, she’d never been so certain of anything in her life as she was of Maggie Sawyer.

She just didn’t know how to make Maggie believe it.

‘I don’t, for the record. Have any doubts. About us. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.’

Maggie said, ‘Are you going to eat your toast?’

‘I’m asking you to marry me, and you want to talk about toast.’

‘I know what you’re doing. Quit stalling.’

Alex sighed. She picked up the toast, and grimaced at it. ‘Only because I love you.’

*

‘If this goes badly, no sex for a week.’

Alex laughed. ‘I’d like to see you try.’ She kissed her girlfriend, lingering, trailing a hand up her arm; noting the catch in Maggie’s breath and the flush under her careful make-up. ‘Bet you couldn’t last three days.’

‘Wanna try me?’

In the event, they didn’t need to find out. The dinner with Emily and her new partner – to the surprise of all involved, Alex suspected – went well. Emily’s datefriend was a lawyer, and they and Maggie spent half the evening ribbing each other’s respective professions and the other half tracing out almost-crossed-paths over the years. Alex realised with some relief that she and Emily didn’t have much in common apart from bafflement at bonsai trees and a shared love of _Game of Thrones._

Afterwards, she made the argument that if dinner going badly meant no sex, then a successful evening meant all the sex. Alex didn’t need to finish making the point before Maggie’s lips on hers rendered words both irrelevant and unattainable.

*

They took a three-thousand-mile round trip to Nebraska, and Alex got to learn about Maggie’s family first-hand. (That’s another story again.)

*

Injuries in the field were common enough. This one was minor – enough to confine Alex to a hospital bed, but only for a few hours while the doctors fussed – though it might have been much worse, and that was why Kara paced, voiced raised, warning Alex to be more careful.

Kara had learned to laugh again, since – since – but she was more on edge than before, permanently, and making mistakes. Alex was alive because she _hadn’t_ but that wasn’t enough to reassure her sister.

Maggie sat quietly until Kara left.

‘You okay?’ Alex asked.

Maggie snorted. ‘You’re the one in stitches.’ She raised Alex’s knuckles to kiss them. (That hurt, but Alex wasn’t going to say.) ‘I was scared. I know how tough you are, but…’

But the best of them could die out there. The false promises faded on Alex’s tongue.

‘Marry me?’ she said.

Maggie burst out laughing. Alex managed to be offended for no more than five seconds before she started laughing too.

‘Babe. You need to work on your timing.’

‘What’s wrong with my timing?’

Maggie shook her head. Kara came back to see what was so funny. When she’d been told, she shook her head and walked out on them. That only made it even funnier. Alex couldn’t have explained why, precisely; only that, after being turned down once, subsequent refusals didn’t hold much sting. She knew that, yes or no, Maggie would be by her side.

And it would have made a horribly un-romantic proposal.

*

Mom helped her throw together a party for Maggie’s birthday. While Alex was writing on the cake, Eliza said, ‘That’s a while you two have been together now.’

‘Mm,’ said Alex, tongue between her teeth, trying to outline an “a” perfectly.

‘I know you’ve been looking into moving in together,’ her mom continued. (She had the less finicky job of spreading chocolate frosting onto the cupcakes.) ‘Have you thought about anything beyond that? Do you think you’ll ask her to marry you?’

Alex stopped. She straightened up, looking at Mom carefully. Was that a twitch? A glint in her eyes? Had Kara spoken to her? Had _Maggie_ spoken to her?

Finally Alex said, deadpan, ‘I don’t know. We’re taking things one step at a time.’

(The party went brilliantly. It was one of those parties people would be talking about for years – _Hey, you remember at Maggie’s birthday…_ Alex’s mom was very proud of herself, though she declined to take credit for the otter in the bathtub.)

*

Alex bought a ring. (That’s not a very interesting story.)

*

Alex hadn’t been apartment-hunting with another person since college. And looking for a one-year lease with a friend you hoped you could tolerate that long was not the same as picking an apartment with someone you loved, and wanted to live with forever, hoping a significant part of forever would be in the apartment you were now hunting for.

They had one (1) argument in front of an estate agent, two (2) full weekends of traipsing round National City, four (4) trips to the bank, and countless (n) rounds of coffee to keep them going. Their (planned) final look round the apartment they’d ultimately settled on was broken up by a call from the DEO, and an emergency with Kara which Alex had to rush off and sort.

Kara was, if anything, more distraught to learn what she’d called Alex away from.

‘Maggie understands that sometimes I have to put the brakes on looking for apartments to make sure my little sister doesn’t _die_ ,’ Alex snapped.

‘Yes, but Alex.’

Alex forced herself to calm down. She didn’t want to give J’onn a headache. And Kara was all right, already regaining her strength under the lamps, yet Alex couldn’t help but be worried. She needed to look out for Kara and she needed to be there for Maggie and she could do both, would do both, but Kara telling her not to only made it harder and she didn’t know when this space had opened up between them.

When she got home she cried into Maggie’s shoulder.

*

Which brings them here.

It’s the first night in their new apartment. There are boxes everywhere. They haven’t got the TV set up yet, so they bicker over the value of watching a film on the iPad’s small screen. Alex wins. While Maggie fetches them wine, she looks up dog adoption places. She narrates her thoughts for Maggie’s benefit. ‘The park’s only five minutes away so that’ll be good to take her for walks – you’re still thinking a female dog, right? Seems appropriate.’

‘I’m not sure dogs have a concept of gender, babe,’ says Maggie, placing Alex’s wine on the coffee table before snuggling against her shoulder.

‘How do you know? Have you ever asked one?’

Maggie laughs but she sounds distant, like she’s thinking of something else. Alex runs fingers through her hair. It’s getting longer. Maggie’s been making noises about split ends and getting it cut, and Alex won’t say anything – hell, she’d hardly be one to talk – but silently she hopes Maggie will keep it long.

She goes back to chattering about dog breeds. Maggie doesn’t say much. She does that, sometimes; she’ll go quiet and let Alex talk, and when Alex trails off in the fear she must be boring Maggie, or that something’s wrong, Maggie insists she was listening and asks her to continue. Or on occasion Alex turns round to realise she’s fallen asleep.

Not tonight. Tonight she’s wide awake.

‘Hey, babe. What are you thinking?’ Alex whispers.

Maggie’s staring past her with those brown eyes; it takes a minute for her gaze to come into focus. ‘I’m thinking…’ She bites her lip. ‘I’d forgotten it was possible to feel this happy. I’m scared it’s not -.’

Alex can’t help trying to finish her broken sentence. ‘That it won’t last?’

‘That it’s not real.’

‘Maggie. I love you so much, and we’ve got this apartment together, and we’re gonna get a dog. Those are all the realest things in the world. Everything else is practically fictional. Okay?’

Maggie takes a deep breath. ‘I love you too.’

She kisses Alex’s shoulder, drains the last of her wine, and settles in again.

Then: ‘Marry me.’

‘What?’ says Alex.

‘Will you marry me, Alex Danvers?’

‘Obviously,’ says Alex. An attempt at dry wit can’t stop the smile spreading across her face, sitting up straight in electrified wonder. She’d started to think Maggie would _never –_ and Maggie is smiling back. ‘Yes. Of course I will. Yes. But why…?’

‘Seemed like the right time.’

That’s barely a scrap of an answer; but Alex can worry about it later. She doesn’t need to know all the reasons. The salient facts are this: they’re going to get married; that knowledge makes something out-of-time in the rhythm of the world click into synch; and the ring Alex bought is hidden safely at the bottom of one of these boxes. In lieu Alex encircles Maggie’s hands in her own and presses kisses across her face until they’re both breathless. And to the end of her days, few moments will be ever so clear.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone can answer this, guys: what's the difference between frosting and icing? Here it's all just icing. I spent way too long Googling it and I still couldn't work out what Americans would say where I say "writing icing".
> 
> Anywho, if you've been paying attention you might have noticed this is a day later than usual. My current (main) WIP is slightly kicking my ass and, more importantly, I'm MEANT to be writing a 5k lit review by Friday, so updates might be a bit more sparse for a while.
> 
> We stumbled through the desert of silent hits, dreaming we glimpsed a mirage of comments on the horizon…


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